1) Why not do a bit more work investigating the feasibility of growing biofuels on brownfields in need of bioremediation? We could do two good things at once — reclaim brownfields while providing feedstocks for fuel. Research in the UK on reed canary grass, and in the US with mustard seed, has already proved quite promising.

2) For a long-term solution, and one that would not require altering a single additional acre of wiliderness nor take out of production a single acre of cropland, but merely rework land that’s already paved and give it a few additional purposes, why not go with Solar Roadways instead?

There are more solutions than you can quote. Some or many may not pan out over the long run, such as corn ethanol, but if we don’t try – only because of the oil, gas & coal industry of early 20th century technology has such a stranglehold (in $$$$$) – then there is NO tomorrows or maybe the day after generation.

Considering full standards at 55 for 2020 is too late. My Prius, 2003, got that. My present vehicle gets on the average of 68+ and that seems too low.

We need to increase our wetlands, reduce our footprint in the desert communities (Southwestern US), create crop planting from small & large dead lots in urban communities – eating non-toxic local foods not Monsanto modified grain. If you eat beef or poultry, fish etc., then let them graze on grass and make them free range. It is cost effective! Agra-business is taking shortcuts for profit not concerned for human diseases down the road. Their profits buy them and their family personally food from co-ops and health food stores, but most have to eat like pigs from the agra-markets (pick &save, albertsons, walmart, etc.). Although if you choose to modify or change your diet (NOT limit) you too can buy from health food stores!

We all need to demand (with boycotts in some situations) the issues that move this country forward not holding on to the 20th century technologies.

Oh, indeed. There are lots of solutions — the main stumbling block is that most of them aren’t ones that already-rich people can use to make more money.

It’s getting ever-more clear that we simply can’t base our economy, and society, on oncological growth. We have to go back to what we had for the most part for tens of thousands of years, up until the past five hundred or so, namely a sustainable steady-state economy. (The Roman Empire was based on oncological and unsustainable growth, and that’s what doomed it; when it lost its tax base in North Africa in the early 5th Century AD, that accelerated its collapse and within a few decades Rome itself was conquered.)

I am not so sure of bio-fuel hype (like ethanol). Current technology does not offer a way to make this concept economically, technically, and environmentally feasible (share volume and downstream cleaning). Solar in selected areas could compete with fossil fuels. We can put more money in research and subsidies (for the time being).

The one percenters love lotteries since they are really a tax on the poor. I recommend a reverse lottery. Give everyone owning 100 million or more a number for each 100 million in assets they own. Put all those numbers in a bingo basket and draw one per month and then take away everything the ‘winner’ owns as a federal tax. That way the incentive, oh those incentives they love, would incentify everyone to make sure they don’t accumulate over 100 million. Problem solved.

I agree with you on almost all your points. The only out of the whole mess, is to think local. Buy food from local farms. Walk or bike more for getting the thing you need. Request better mass transit, like most of Europe, or Minneapolis, MN.

Thank for the link. I have not looked at all the option thoroughly, but the one that caught my eye was the 401K. My small firm did the same 401K and stock option. It was a mistake.

I wish I had done this to my employees when I created a successful computer software firm! They remained employed when I sold the firm, due to my illness, and are still employed, but they lost money in the stock market years after I sold the firm – both in their 401K and the stock options.

After retiring, I have recently taken a good portion of what I made and bought a few mortgages of relatives & friends.

I am trying now to find a way for relative’s & friend’s offsprings to take college loans from me below government rates

Thanks, Don. The 401(k) reminds me: I was just thinking of posting a diary on NYT writer Joe Nocera’s “My Faith-Based Retirement”, where the guy who thought he was smart enough to handle his own investments is now staring at the tattered remains of his 401(k) plan and realizing that he can never retire:

When I related my tale recently to Teresa Ghilarducci, a behavioral economist at The New School who studies retirement and investor behavior, she let out the kind of sigh that made it clear that she had heard it all before. The sad truth, she told me, is that I’m the rule, not the exception. “People have income shock, like divorce or loss of a job or a health crisis,” and those crises tend to drain retirement accounts, she said.
But even putting income shocks aside, she said, most human beings lack the skill and emotional wherewithal to be good investors. Linking investing and retirement has turned out to be a recipe for disaster.

This is a guy, mind you, who as he ruefully admits was so full of hubris during the go-go years of the mid-’90s that he actually wrote a book about what he thought of as “the democratization of money”.